


in violent times (you shouldn't have to sell your soul)

by violentdarlings



Category: Z Nation (TV)
Genre: Between Episodes, Dehumanization, F/M, Insecurity, Porn With Plot, Season 3, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-26 19:58:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14409510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violentdarlings/pseuds/violentdarlings
Summary: Murphy receives a visitor, in Spokane.Set early season 3.





	in violent times (you shouldn't have to sell your soul)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Shout by Tears for Fears.
> 
> Set in between S03E03 "Murphy's Miracle" and S03E04 "Escorpion and the Red Hand". Basically an excuse to get all these X-rated Murphy feels out of my system.

The day begins like any other: Murphy drags his ass out of bed, inspects his face for changes in his skin, and idly walks around his compound. It’s good, for his people to see his face, even if he is losing little splotches of colour. They seem content to neither comment nor notice, which is exactly how he likes it.

Will brings him the day’s news when he enters his throne room. “Eighteen more came to the gates throughout the night,” he reports. Murphy shrugs.

“As they should,” he replies. “How goes the work on the perimeter?”

It’s dull work, listening to the minutiae of his community, but it’s necessary. More refugees arrive each day, drawn to the lure of safety and freedom from fear like zombies to fresh brains, but Merch is still making less progress than he would like. He can’t bite everyone, after all; it takes too much out of him.

“Herd the zombie pack in the eastern part of the city into the moat,” he directs. “Have the fences checked first, though. The last thing we need is a breach.”

Will nods. “Of course, Murphy,” he says. Murphy allows himself a brief, satisfied smile. He always hears sir in the voices of his Blends, even when they don’t actually say it. He can practically hear Warren now; _small time criminal gets off on ordering people around, huh? You’re a walking caricature, Murphy, now get your ass back here so I can drag you to California –_

He winces. It’s not a pleasant thought. “Are you still here?” he snaps at Will, regretting it almost instantly. He shouldn’t take it out on his Blends, they’ve been through enough.

“There’s a woman who would like to see you,” Will replies uncertainly.

“Tell her the cure is coming and she has to wait like everyone else –” He stops as Will shakes his head. “She doesn’t want the cure?”

“No, sir,” Will says. “Just to talk to you. She says to say she brought gifts for the new lord of Spokane.”

Lord of Spokane. Well, doesn’t that just sound nice. “Gifts?” Murphy asks. “Like what?”

 

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” the short, thin woman says. Murphy slouches on his throne, one leg thrown over the side, eyeing the small box she has brought with her.

“Has she been searched?” he asks Will in an undertone. The other man nods.

“Yes, we removed three knives and a Glock. The box is safe.”

“You tried to bring weapons into my home?” Murphy asks, raising his voice. The woman tilts her head to the side, her eyes keen.

“I knew I’d be searched at the door,” she retorts. “But a girl has to be careful. You understand, I hope.”

He did, curse her. “Then what do you want?” he snaps. “Will, you can go.” Somehow it’s harder, to be alone with someone who isn’t under his control, who is unknown. But Will has work to do. Progress must march on.

“I keep an eye on the folks who make a name for themselves,” she says, a hand on her hip where he’s sure a weapon usually rests. He has foibles of his own. Everyone does, these days. “I’m a trader, mostly. It does my business good to keep on the favourable side of powerful people.”

Murphy knows he shouldn’t be, but he’s flattered despite himself. “Got a name?” he grunts at her. she smiles. It changes her face, takes it from tired and post-apocalyptic to lively. Murphy runs a speculative eye down her worn camouflage pants, the dark tank that exposes muscled biceps and sun-tanned forearms. Not a bad figure, considering.

“Hunter,” she replies. “I brought you a few little somethings.” As she bends down, a coil of hair escape from the dark mass pinned up harshly to the back of her head. “Bloody thing,” she snaps, and throws it over her shoulder. Murphy watches, halfway to interested, as she opens her box.

The first thing to appear is a bottle of Jack Daniels. The noise Murphy hears himself make is pure _lust_. “You can’t be serious,” he breathes, and is up before he knows it, crossing the room to see for himself. The bottle handed to him is like a dream rising from the depths of his subconscious, like a vestige of a former life. He can taste it already, the saliva pooling on his tongue. “Where the hell did you find this?”

Up close, the fine lines around the woman’s eyes are evident, and there are silver threads in her dark hair. “I hunt for treasure,” she replies. “You’d be surprised how many old shelters and bunkers there are that are well hidden and haven’t been pillaged. Some even from the Cold War era. My team and I are experienced in finding hidden things and getting them to where they’ll do the most good.”

Murphy eyes her again, her worn and battered clothes. Not in it for the money, then, or whatever passes for money these days. Hunter’s light eyes flick up to his, and Murphy feels heat rise in his cheeks. He’s probably going purple now. He hadn’t realised his quick assessment of her clothes might also be construed as something else.

“That all you got?” he asks, setting the bottle down with more care than he’s handled anything since he had to give up Lucy. Hunter shakes her head and lifts out a bag of cocoa and a bag of sugar. Dry things, sealed things that would survive years underground. And rarities.

“What do you expect me to do with those?” he inquires sharply. Better not to let her see how interested he is in her gifts. It’s been a long time since anyone thought to give him a present. Hunter shrugs, and hands him a tin of long-life milk.

“Word is you’re setting up a nursery for a little girl,” she says offhandedly, and Murphy feels the hackles rise on the back of his neck. Lucy. “Thought maybe she might like a hot cocoa.”

His throat goes tight. Booze is one thing, but this, this is thoughtful. Dare he say it, it might even be kind. “Is that it?” he asks, his voice ragged. He misses his little blue baby like his heart has been peppered with rocks.

“For you,” Hunter says, and drops a pair of cufflinks into his hand. They’re silver, with little blue stones set into them in a diamond pattern, and they’re the prettiest, most absurdly unnecessary thing he’s seen in years.

“Don’t tell me you robbed a jewellery store,” he snaps. Hunter winks.

“I never reveal my sources,” she teases – is it teasing, how can he tell, it’s been so long – and hesitates before plunging her hand into her pocket. Murphy flinches away, fearing a weapon, but all she brings out is a coin, a penny, polished to mirror brightness. Murphy turns it over in his palm, sees a twisted blue reflection in its surface, and closes his hand around it involuntarily. He doesn’t want to see that.

“Why do I need a penny?” he asks caustically. Hunter raises cool eyes to his. Green, like the world might have been, once.

“It’s from the year of the outbreak,” she says. “Maybe your girl might want to see where it all started.” She straightens up. “Mr Murphy, I ask permission to travel through your lands,” she says formally. “I also ask permission to retaliate should any of your people try to take what is mine.”

“They won’t,” Murphy says automatically. It’s true, they won’t without his word. Hunter shrugs.

“If I receive your permission to travel unmolested through Spokane, I will contribute to the continued survival of your community by paying a tithe in whatever we have when we pass through. I also work on commission, should there be anything you need.” She lowers her eyes; Murphy tries not to notice that from this angle he can see straight down the neckline of her shirt to breasts that shouldn’t be that big considering she looks like she’s recently escaped from a concentration camp.

“And you don’t want my cure?” he asks. Hunter’s eyes go cold and dark.

“Forgive me, but I’ve had quite enough of putting things into my body that I don’t know the complete effects of,” she replies sharply. “I learned that well before the apocalypse. So, thank you, but no thank you, Mr Murphy. I’ll get by on my own.”

Murphy swallows. He doesn’t know why her sharpness feels like it abrades his skin, all the way down to his bones. Women. They didn’t make sense before, why should they now. Although Warren always made sense, but he’s trying very hard not to think about Warren.

“You have my permission,” he replies, his throat tight. Hunter nods and gives him a smile that manages to be both tired and cheerful.

“Thank you,” she replies, and turns to go. From behind, he can see the bones of her shoulder-blades poking through her skin, the way her pants hang off her scrawny frame with almost no ass to fill them out. Damn it.

She’s so _thin_.

“Wait,” he says. She turns, her box on her hip, her light eyes quizzical. “Have you eaten?”

 

Hunter devours two carrots and half a cucumber with noises of bliss that conspire to make Murphy more than a little uncomfortable. “Your people grow these?” she asks. She’s so small against his vast dining table, but she sits up straight, holds her own. He likes that.

“We found a community garden that was somehow still alive,” he tells her. “No wonder you’re so scrawny if all you eat is vegetables.” He winces, expecting her displeasure, but all she does is laugh.

“Well, meat isn’t safe anymore,” she reminds him. “Or any animal product, for that matter. God, I miss cheese.”

“Cheese is good,” Murphy agrees inanely, picking at his own food.

“My group and I live off tinned stuff, mostly,” she continues. “Fresh vegetables? Very rare. I’m in heaven right now.” He eyes her warily. She does look better. There’s a flush of pleasure in her cheeks and a dreamy cast to her eyes.

“If you find so much, why do you look…” He doesn’t know how to say it nicely.

“We traded half our last haul for antibiotics,” she replies. “Pickings has been kind of slim since then. And honestly, the kids need the food more.” Murphy raises an eyebrow.

“You have kids?” Hunter shakes her head.

“No, but we meet a lot of families who do. I like to give them something, even if it only lasts them the night. Everyone deserves not to go to bed hungry.” She pauses, sipping from a water bottle. “I can’t have kids,” she says bluntly, meeting his eyes. Murphy doesn’t know where to look. He’s never known how to talk to women about this stuff. “Since before the apocalypse.”

“That’s…. oh,” Murphy says lamely, aware he should say something and having no idea what. “I suppose that would be hard.”

“Life goes on,” Hunter replies. She looks at him, really looks, and Murphy is painfully, acutely conscious of what she sees. Mottled blue skin, odd, variegated eyes, and hair and beard that is patchy in most places. Thank God he’s got his shirt on, she would probably scream at the sight of the rest of him. Not that Serena did, come to think of it, but Serena wasn’t exactly… right, in the head. “What about you? You must have had a hell of a time.”

Murphy manages a flicker of a smile. That’s a way to put it. “Yeah,” he agrees. “But I’m here now.” With thousands of bodies behind him. Hammond, Garnett, Mack, Serena, Cassandra, just to name the ones he knew. He doesn’t think about that. He can’t.

“Alone?” Hunter prods. She blushes when he stares at her. “It just seems like such a big place, and no one to share it with.”

“I have people to share it with,” Murphy defends, inexplicably stung. “My people. I protect them.”

“You look out for them,” Hunter rephrases. Murphy nods. “But who looks out for you?” Murphy stares at her, completely struck dumb. The woman across from him looks down, like she’s embarrassed. There is still colour in her cheeks. “I had another reason, for coming here,” she confesses.

“Do tell,” Murphy drawls, caustic because he’s nervous. Better to lash out first, to strike before being struck.

Hunter’s eyes are bright, maybe with emotion, maybe with unshed tears. He can’t tell. Doesn’t want to tell. “They say you make people… unafraid,” she says, almost too soft to hear. “That you take away their fear.”

“I’m not biting anyone anymore,” Murphy snaps, properly irritated now. Why don’t people just come out and say what they want, rather than treating him nice and getting his hopes up –

“I don’t want that,” she replies, and his brain stalls. “I just wanted –” She sighs, and gets out of her chair, coming around to his side of the table. She’s fast. Warren would like her.

“Don’t,” he warns, expecting an attack, trying to rise to his feet, but she’s too quick. Quite suddenly and bewilderingly, he has an armful of warm, live woman, is held fast to his chair by the weight of her. He stares up at her, stricken, helpless, like a mouse staring hypnotised in the eyes of a snake.

Hunter’s expression is impossible to read. “What are you doing,” he croaks out. Her eyes spark and a smile curves her mouth.

“Hush,” she murmurs. “Don’t fear.”

He sees the kiss coming, but he’s still set adrift by it. He hasn’t kissed anyone since Serena, and then long before that, before he went to jail. Serena had been odd, almost mad; her touch had been laced with fervour and futility. He’s quite sure she only wanted a child out of the whole affair; her fascination with his otherness had been uncomfortable, like being fetishized, her attraction to him the sum of his oddness alone.

This is different. He’s not the Murphy right now; he’s just himself, almost close to comfortable in his own skin, for once. He loses himself into the simple pleasure of being kissed, his hands finding a natural place on the curve of her waist, as easy as breathing. She kisses calmly, intently, like she’s plundering out his secrets; Murphy doesn’t know how he kisses, if he’s even any good at it. He was never any good with women before.

Serena had terrified him, with the possibility of intimacy; this is no exception. He’s vaguely aware he’s shuddering under Hunter’s hands, her hands, which are everywhere, framing his face, curving around the back of his neck, running down his chest. His dick is already hard, stirred into life just by the heat of another body so close to his.

“You don’t know me,” he manages to gasp out as she nibbles playfully at his ear, dropping lazy kisses down his jaw. “I could be – a terrible person.”

“I know that I like you,” she replies, pulling back, her green-glass eyes bright. He looks down, wishes he hadn’t; her nipples are hard, poking through her shirt, because evidently she’s one of those women who has decided the apocalypse is a fine time to burn her bras. “Precious little of that in my life. Do you want to or not?”

He does, oh, he does.

“Not here,” he says, and she scoots off his lap, holding out her hand like she’s the one to lead him, rather than the opposite.

There’s no one around. He takes her hand.

 

His bedroom is a luxury, a sheer indulgence of the senses that is so uncommon in these apocalypse days as to make Hunter’s eyes pop open in shock. “You have _sheets_ ,” she breathes out, as stunned as Murphy himself had been when she’d presented him with the Jack.

“Yeah,” he replies, scrubbing a hand through his hair. It’s all becoming too real. It’s midday, the sun shining in, and he’s here with a stranger who apparently wants to jump his bones. It doesn’t seem plausible. “Is this a trick?” he asks suspiciously. Hunter smiles at him and sits down on the bed. His bed. Christ.

“Take my mind off the world, Mr Murphy,” she says, and pulls off her steel cap combat boots, one at a time, and then her socks. Murphy watches, mesmerised. He’d never seen Serena naked. It’s got to be close on a decade since he saw a live woman without her clothes on. A live woman, close and wanting, with promise in her eyes. “Give me a moment without fear.” She’s down to her tank and her underwear. Murphy can’t tear his eyes away.

“And what will you give me?” he asks. Hunter, it seems wrong to call her that. It doesn’t fit, somehow. “What’s your real name, anyway?” Something comes into her eyes.

“I was Tasha, before,” she says softly. “Natasha. But I preferred Tasha.”

“Tasha,” Murphy repeats. It’s better, it suits her. She smiles, and Murphy is suddenly very aware that she is so much lower than him, that she has her hands on his zipper. “You shouldn’t –” he begins, a hot flush of shame and want sweeping through him at the thought of her mouth _there_ , Jesus Christ.

“I won’t if you don’t want me to,” she says, and puts her head against his hip. Murphy’s hand finds its way into her hair without any conscious input from his mind.

“I do want to, I do, so much,” he croaks out, purple with humiliation. “But you shouldn’t have to –” Put her mouth on him, God, not the shell of his mutilated and damaged body, this thing he inhabits with equal loathing and will to survive.

“I like it,” she says, and while his brain is still parsing that unlikely statement, she unzips him, reaches into his pants and takes out his dick. Murphy nearly passes out just from that, both regretful and thrilled about his decision to go commando, and his eyes roll back in his head when she licks up the length of him before swallowing him down.

Fuck, but it’s been so long. His legs are shaking, his hands are trembling on her head, he can hear the humiliating rough groans he’s making and he’s not even naked but he feels so bare, like she’s ripped away the ruin of his body to touch the him inside, the him that still feels human and alive. She pulls away, murmurs, “Is this okay?” but Murphy doesn’t have the words to answer; he guides her mouth back to his cock and Tasha takes him all the way, his balls resting against her chin, her tongue laving the vein that runs up his dick. And her eyes, her eyes, that look at him and _see_ him, that don’t look away even as he starts to fuck her mouth, with tiny, needy little jumps of his hips like his body has forgotten how to come.

It hasn’t, of course. He pushes harder, fists his hands in her hair, and she makes a little choking sound but her hands are still gripping his ass so he doesn’t stop. Truthfully, he doubts if he could stop; she has him so deep, the sweep of her tongue and the tightness of her throat are like the sweetest torture imaginable and he’s going to come, oh God it’s too soon what will she think, should he tell her, should he pull back.

“Tasha, I’m gonna,” he gasps, and can manage no more. Tasha raises an eyebrow and brings one hand up, thumb raised, before winking at him. Her hand disappears and he can feel it, the soft weight of his balls in her palm, the feathery stroke of her fingertips.

He can’t take any more. Murphy throws his head back, vaguely aware that the guttural roar he can his is his own voice, spending down her throat for what feels like forever. He can feel it everywhere, his skin tightening and prickling, his balls drawn up close to his body, sensation like lightning up and down his spine, all the way down to his toes flexing in his shoes. He never wants it to stop, that moment of pure thoughtlessness, but of course it must, and he comes back to himself slowly, his softening cock still in her mouth, no longer sucking but merely holding, as if to reassure him as he regains higher thought.

Once the flush of ecstasy has passed, Murphy can barely bring himself to look at her. Her. Tasha. His dick slips out of her mouth, and Murphy watches, spellbound, as she delicately licks a drop of come from her lips. “Sorry,” he rasps out, hastily tucking himself away. Tasha lifts an eyebrow.

“What for?” she asks, and her hands are tugging him down, onto the bed. Murphy gives in, because his bones feel like overcooked noodles, and he finds himself, very surprisingly, flat on his back with her draped over him.

“For – you know,” he mumbles, feeling all of fifteen again and desperately virginal, confused by even a nod from someone of the opposite sex. To think, he can still feel that young. He hadn’t thought it possible.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Tasha says, laughing. He can feel the puff of her breath against his neck. “You enjoyed yourself, didn’t you?” Murphy barks out a laugh.

“Fuck yeah, I did.” It’s an understatement. He hasn’t felt this good in years.

“I like pleasing people,” she says softly, and it sounds almost shy. Murphy turns his head so he can see her, and its only after he’s met her gaze for more than half a minute that he remembers his eyes. He tries to turn away, but Tasha grabs his chin in thin, strong fingers and keeps her eyes locked with his. “Wow,” she murmurs. “That’s something you don’t see every day.” Murphy swallows.

“You don’t find it – weird?” he asks, wanting to crawl somewhere dark where her gaze can’t follow him.

“Oh, its definitely weird,” she says. “But not bad weird, no.” Her hands drop, to the buttons of his shirt. “Wanna go again?” she asks, and her tone is nothing like coy, and somehow everything like. Murphy laughs despite himself.

“Give me a minute,” he chuckles, and he’s distracted enough to not notice the last of his buttons being released.

Tasha gasps, and it brings him back to himself. But before he can flinch away, she is spreading his shirt wide, drinking in the terrible sight of his mutilated torso. “My God,” she whispers, and trails a finger over the worst of them, where he’d lost two of his ribs. “What you must have gone through.”

Murphy, still rigid with incredible discomfort, takes a moment to process this. She doesn’t sound pitying. She sounds like she thinks he’s _brave_.

“You don’t need to look,” he mutters. Tasha lifts her eyes to his.

“Don’t you dare be ashamed,” she says fiercely. “You survived. We’re all more than the sum of our scars.” Murphy barks out a laugh, distinctly mirthless.

“You think you’ve got anything this bad?” he asks. Tasha’s eyes flash.

“Like this?” she asks, pulling her tank top over her head. For a moment all Murphy can notice is full breasts with rose nipples, before his eyes drop and he sees a ragged scar weaving across her abdomen. He touches it, hardly noting the clash of his blue skin against her cream.

“What happened?” he asks. Tasha shrugs.

“I had cancer,” she replies crisply. “Before the apocalypse. We all have scars, Murphy.” He likes the sound of his name in her voice.

“I suppose we do,” he says. He can’t keep his eyes off her tits. Tasha follows his gaze down, and her eyes change. She guides his hand up, and this, this Murphy knows how to do, remembers. He doesn’t need any further invitation to fill his hands with her softness, to tease her nipples stiff with the rough pads of his fingertips, to bend his head and lick her everywhere she’ll let him.

Sprawled across his pillow, Tasha reaches up and unpins her hair in one short motion. Murphy, his lips on her nipple and his hand toying with the other, feels the soft weight of it come around him, like a shield against the world.

“That’s good,” she sighs, and the note of satisfaction in it has Murphy swelling in his pants. God, so soon. he’s not sure how he ended up cradled between her thighs, her legs wrapped around him, but he’s in no frame of mind to move. More than anything he wants to lick her out, but he hasn’t tried in years and his previous efforts left his partner sighing, “God, Alvin, would you just stop already?” Not like there’s a roadmap on how to give good head. But fuck, he wants it, the taste of her, her thighs wrapped around his head, rocking his face into the core of her. he can almost taste it, musk-sweet and heavy on his tongue.

Tasha has other ideas. “In me,” she gasps. Murphy raises an eyebrow and kisses her, long, pressing his tongue into her mouth. Tasha melts underneath him, her hands raking at his shoulders before fumbling him out of the rest of his shirt.

“You’re in no position to give orders,” he replies, a sudden surge of power inside of him like a rush of blood to the head. Tasha whines, and writhes lazily underneath him, no barrier between them but Murphy’s pants and her thin underwear.

“But you want to,” she says, smirking, and rubs herself up against him like a cat. He can feel the wetness of her through her panties. “Don’t you?”

He does, damn it. “Hell,” he mutters, and shucks his pants. “Demanding little bitch.” Tasha just laughs at him, her panties hanging off one ankle, already rubbing her slick cunt against his dick. If he thought her mouth was good, this is damn near heaven.

“Say please,” she says coyly, just the tip of him in her before she sinks her hips down towards the bed, drawing him out of her. The loss of her is like a bullet, and Murphy is talking before he knows the words are coming out of his mouth.

“Please,” he moans, and then, because he can’t stop, “Oh, God, _please.”_

So much for power, but it hardly matters, because he’s inside her and she’s warm, no, hot, melting the frost off his bones. Murphy closes his eyes against her shoulder, already thrusting, the instinctive motion taking over. “Wanna make you come,” he mutters, his teeth practically aching with the desire to bite her. To make her his. Completely his.

“Clit,” she says back, kissing his shoulder, his throat, any part of him she can reach. Murphy’s skin prickles down his spine, and he works his hand between their bodies to find her clit, hard, budded tight. She moans when he touches it, gasps out his name when he finds the right rhythm, fast little circles, and the world shrinks down to just him and the woman in his arms, begging him to bring her off.

She cries out, louder than before, and spasms around him, like she’s trying to draw him inside her all the way, to keep him there forever. Murphy smirks into her shoulder, but the pulse of her is inexorable, and he comes inside of her with a roar.

 

When Murphy opens his eyes, it’s dark, and there’s a head on his shoulder, long hair tickling his skin. “Whassa time?” he asks groggily. There’s a soft sigh.

“Not sure,” Tasha replies. “Late, I think.” Murphy, his eyes adjusting to the dark, sees the glint of her eyes. Lazily, she kisses the part of him she’s closest to; it’s hardly her fault that she lands on one of his scars and Murphy’s whole body goes electric.

“Fuck,” he hisses, warped sensation singing through his body, the ruined flesh far more sensitive than it has any right to be. Tasha pulls away.

“Did that hurt?” she asks, and he hears genuine concern.

“It’s fine,” he grunts, and gets out of bed, joints popping as he stretches and gets into his clothes. He needs to check on Merch, on the progress of the vaccine, on the work on the perimeter. A whole afternoon and evening wasted sleeping, stretched out warm and safe with a body twined around his, cushioned against his frame. Like he’s _normal_. Like he has the right to comfort.

He finds Will downstairs, taking stock of their armaments by light of a lantern. Murphy’s dream of restoring power to Spokane is a long way off. “You’re here late,” Murphy says, leaning against a wall. Will shrugs. He doesn’t even bother to turn around.

“Work’s gotta get done,” he replies. Murphy scratches an ear thoughtfully.

“You and the wife still sleeping in the back of that van?” he asks. Will turns, shakes his head. By the light of the lantern, he looks almost as weird as Murphy himself.

“We’ve got a room now,” the other man replies. A sudden smile humanises his face. “Cassidy has a bed of her own.”

Now Murphy is smiling himself. “Go home, Will,” he says. “See you in the morning.” Will nods.

“Is that woman still here?” he asks. Murphy shrugs.

“Yeah. Think it’s a problem?” Will’s face is cast again into shadow; it’s impossible to tell what he’s thinking.

“She’s not one of us. Can we trust her?” Murphy smirks.

“Undoubtedly not,” he retorts. “See you tomorrow.”

Tasha stirs when Murphy comes back, a lantern of his own lighting the way. “Empire still intact?” she asks sleepily. Murphy chuckles.

“Appears so.” He’d found Merch asleep at her desk, her head pillowed on her notebook. He’d draped her white coat over her, only because he didn’t want his key to the vaccine catching pneumonia, but that didn’t explain why he’d tucked a lock of tangled hair behind her ear. She’s one of his now, and he’s inclined to be kind to his own. That has to be it.

“Good,” Tasha replies. Murphy sits on the edge of the bed, trying to collect himself, which is made difficult by the press of bare breasts to his back as Tasha rests her head on his shoulder. It seems presumptuous, to ask if she wants to fuck again, and in truth he’s not sure he could even manage. He’s had more sex today than he’s had in years, he’s not a teenager anymore, and there’s the small fact of his body being caught between human and zombie. What must it be like, he wonders, to lie next to something barely human, to touch it like it means something.

“I’m tired,” he says aloud, and is surprised to realise it’s true. He is tired, all the way down to his bones.

Tasha doesn’t reply aloud. But she draws him down to the bed, tucks herself behind him, her cheek to his shoulder, her arm draped over his side. He’s being _spooned_.

He falls asleep before he remembers to object.

 

In the morning, when he wakes up, she is gone.

_Dear Murphy,_

_Apologies for not saying goodbye, and even more for stealing from you. But needs must when the devil drives, and I know a little girl who will die without these. Thank you for the vegetables, and for the *wink wink*. I’m sure you know what I mean._

_I anticipate coming through Spokane in two weeks. I’ll drop off replacement antibiotics then._

_T.H._

Murphy crumples the note up in his hand. “What did she take?” he asks Will, who is outraged in the extreme.

“Half our stock of antibiotics – two bottles,” he amends, when Murphy raises an eyebrow. “The nerve of her, stealing from us after you allowed her to stay the night –” Will is nearly apoplectic; Murphy, almost touched, sets a hand on his shoulder.

“All it means is that we need to focus more on our security,” he says decisively, feeling Will relax under his touch. His Blends are so attuned to him, he can influence even their mood. “I’ll go over all the exterior doors today, you can find us some better guards in the camp.” Will nods.

“Twenty-two more this morning,” he says, brightening. “One of them has to know the right end of a gun to hold.” Murphy grins. It shows off his terrible teeth. He’s learning not to care.

“Excellent,” he replies, and watches Will go, scrunching the note more in his fist. He should be angry, he knows, that she fooled him, that she stole from him. But.

Tasha didn’t need to fuck him to gain access to his facility; she was already inside. She fucked him because she wanted to. Maybe he’s still got it, blue and all.

Murphy smirks, and gets to work.


End file.
